


White Heat Red Hot

by 51stCenturyFox



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man 3 - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Iron Man 3 Spoilers, Missing Scene, Post-Canon Fix-It, i ship everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 13:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/51stCenturyFox/pseuds/51stCenturyFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a brief missing scene between Pepper and Tony prior to the end of Iron Man 3. </p><p>  <b>Contains spoilers for the film.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	White Heat Red Hot

“It's a really, really terrible idea, Tony,” Pepper says, though it’s still flattering that even with her ponytail askew and wearing board shorts and a borrowed hoodie, her boyfriend's looking at her like she's magical. The problem is that it's still too risky.

“You know you want to.”

She hesitates, a second too long. “I-”

“You want to.” Tony bites his lip and looks at her sidelong under lowered lashes, and Pepper almost folds. Almost.

“I do. Of course I do, but I’m just being pragmatic and realistic and...”

“All the things that made you the best CEO.”

“I could _hurt_ you, Tony.” She waits for him to return her level, solemn gaze, and he raises both hands in defeat. Wanting isn’t the point. She can’t really control this yet. Sometimes she can exert the energy in a targeted way -- she’d been through weeks of tests, with Bruce and Tony logging the results. But last night her mind had wandered back to what had happened at AIM when she was getting ready for bed and she’d startled at the scent of singed plastic and mint and found that she’d melted her toothbrush. 

“You win, Potts tamale,” Tony concedes. “And we both lose.”

Pepper rolls her eyes.

“You know, I _could_ remote-control a suit...”

“You want to have sex with me via a remote-controlled suit.” Pepper isn’t even surprised he’s suggesting this. Nor is she surprised that there are now three iron suits here in the less-palatial beachfront house they’d bought under the name of a shell corporation, because god knew Tony Stark couldn’t get insurance and the two residents nearest the destroyed Malibu mansion were still threatening lawsuits. Mostly, they seem to be upset that the remaining debris is an eyesore. The Mark VII, or a close facsimile, rests in a bullet-shaped case in the main coat closet, there’s a Mark XXXVII which is just completely weird, and who knew what number the other was, this other remote-controlled version. But that’s it. Three suits. An emergency suit, a weird suit, and a backup to play with, because Tony wants them, not because he needs them. He goes to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour too, in one of the other bedrooms, which she knows because JARVIS is a tattletale. And because she slips in and watches him sleep for a while, every night.

But it’s not her bedroom, because Pepper doesn’t trust herself not to have a flashback or a nightmare and _catch the bed on fire_. It hasn't happened yet, but there had been a few close calls. 

“Well?” Pepper asks, because he'd called her down here for something, even though Tony now looks as if he’s seriously considering the logistics of this suit-sex deal, and she wonders if that's the reason.

“Well...I’m game if you are.”

“ _Tony_.”

“Right. Okay, so, unrelated to that, but you’re probably still gonna kill me,” Tony spins in his chair and Pepper’s actually happy about the change of subject, because, okay, she was also contemplating the logistics of somehow...yeah. It’s been a while.

“I’m not going to kill you, Tony. Not in any sort of premeditated scenario, anyway.” She manages a tiny smirk when his eyes widen in mock horror.

“Well, this is related to the injections that I gave myself, before.”

Pepper hadn’t known about those, _before_ , but she does now. She knits her brow. “Oh. No. You’re not sick or anything, are you?”

“No! I'm good, I'm great.” Tony assures her quickly. Relieved, Pepper flops into one of the black Le Corbusier chairs and swings a leg over the blocky armrest. “It’s just that, in the course of rectifying your minor bio-hybridization issue, Bruce and I successfully synthesized a safe version of Extremis using the new calculations and uh, it’s in me.”

“What?” Pepper can feel a flicker of tight heat at her spine, and it’s not like Bruce, it’s not. It’s not that she gets mad or upset and the Extremis automatically kicks in, but sudden stress sometimes makes it happen and she feels nervous and itchy and she can’t yet control-- “ _What_?”

“Relax, Pep.” Tony urges. “Unless you want to come over here and warm up my coffee, because it’s gone kind of,” he sips and flashes a filthy smile. "Tepid."

She bites back a reply because Tony knows as much as she does about how this works at this point, and thank god constant teasing and unremitting sexual tension don't have an effect, otherwise she'd have torched the house by now. She takes a deep breath and stretches back against the other arm of the chair, feeling the threat within her subside, slowly. “I’m fine. Fine. Perfect. But you’re nuts.”

“I promise you it’s stable and I’m not a hunk of burning love. Except metaphorically.”

Pepper exhales slowly on a silent count to five, and then attempts to sound breezy and calm and serene. “Why on earth would you test it on yourself?”

“Because I test everything on myself? Tony squints at her. “No, back up, wrong answer. Because we’ve made it safe. Who else could I test it on? Bruce? Not a viable plan, given his makeup. I’d like to have Killian back as a human guinea pig, but actually I’m lying about that. No I don’t. You know, we did actually inject dozens of lab rats before me. We’re not idiots.”

“I’m not saying that.” Pepper pauses then, because what can she say? Bruce and Tony are both genius-level brilliant, but they've also tested things on themselves in the past with decidedly mixed results.

“And the other perk is that you’re going to keep some of the benefits but none of the inferno bits. Also, preliminary testing seems to suggest that I can actually...” he taps on the disk glowing faintly beneath his Led Zep Swan Song t-shirt. “Heal now. Really heal. I'd still have to have the shrapnel surgically removed, but the regeneration factor--”

“Oh my god,” Pepper breathes, “That’s...that’s--” and she’s out of her chair and her arms are around Tony and the only warmth she feels is his chest, solid against hers and his lips at the side of her jaw. And it’s fantastic, she notes, before giving his shoulders a final squeeze and pulling away reluctantly. “So.”

“So. Whenever you’re ready.” Tony reaches along the bench and hefts a pneumatic injector.

Pepper eyes it. “You mean, _now?_ ” She trusts him; he'd never do anything to hurt her, but that doesn't mean there isn't a risk.

“No time like the present.”

“It’s gonna hurt, isn’t it?”

Tony looks at the ceiling. “Uh, less than falling 200 feet into a freighter pyre?”

“Hmm.”

“But uh, we could...sleep in the same bed tonight.”

Pepper only hesitates for a moment before pushing up her sleeve.

**Author's Note:**

> It bugged me, thinking that Tony couldn't have had the shrapnel surgically removed before, when the palladium was poisoning him. And of course after he'd have the arc reactor removed there would still be this massive chest hole, so he's refined Extremis for the healing factor when working to stabilize Pepper, hasn't he? 
> 
> Title from the Judas Priest song. I loved IM3, but it needed more heavy metal that didn't fly out of Tony's ruined basement. Heh.


End file.
